TAKE ONE Presents... - The Impossipod 1: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Simon and Jim launch a new TAKE ONE Presents... limited series on the Mission: Impossible franchise starting with the 1990s spy thriller, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE directed by Brian De Palma. They discuss the cultural context of the 1990s when this film came out, how this film leans into spycraft and espionage compared to the blockbuster action of later films in the franchise, and Tom Cruise's non-traditional approach to the exhibitionism of the action hero.Content warnings: nausea and vomiting; torture and interrogation; violent death including murder and assassination; public transport disaster.Our theme song is Star - X - Impossible Mission (Mission Impossible Theme PsyTrance Remix) by EDM Non-Stop (https://soundcloud.com/edm-non-stop/star-x-impossible-mission) licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/NIFQIZ9P

Your mission should you choose to accept it is to obtain photographic proof, theft, shadow glitzen to his buyer, and apprehend with both. As always, should you or any member of your I am force be caught or kill Secretary of Sabo? Hello and welcome to Take One Presents. This is our new miniseries, The Impossopod, about the Mission Impossible films. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to listen to us watch all the Mission Impossible franchise films in order, contextualizing them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Jim Ross. Jim. Hello. So here we go. We're starting a new series. We've done Alien. We did Jurassic Park. Go back and listen to the xenopod and the dinapod respectively. They're on the same feed. But we are back to discuss the Mission Impossible films. What is your experience with the Mission Impossible films? Why are we watching these?

Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, one, it's, when I was doing some research for this one, it hadn't really clocked with me, but of course it's true, this franchise exists across four decades now, right? Without being rebooted or redone in any way, right? From 1996. It's a really interesting part of it. 1996, Mission Impossible, the film we're discussing in this episode,

to the present day, because there is a Mission Impossible film out this year, right? Yeah, yeah, and it'll come out, so the run of this series, it'll come out, like, we won't cover it until quite a few months out after it's come out, but it'll come out during our kind of run of recording these.

And I think what's interesting about it is we've made allusions to it with the dinapod and the xenopod, but also kind of like what it takes on from individual directors, or because Tom Cruise takes such a sort of big creative role in these and let's say the different creative influences on it, right, and how that's reflected in the film. And I think you sort of see that in the alien film But Lesso, like, you know, you kind of still got rid of, you know, we spoke in that series about the Ridley Scott, James Cameron, kind of, you know, dual personalities and the identity crisis going on there. And then the Dinopod, you know, less so. I think you've still got very much the overarching kind of like, you know, attempt to be Spielbergian about the whole thing. This one, I think, is far more, particularly in the early years of the franchise, just complete stylistic whiplash, right? And we'll get into that as we go through individual films.

But because it's such a long-running series and it has common DNA, it's got a common star, it's not being rebooted or anything like that. It's kind of, it's an interesting film to look at that way, in terms of how it reflects when the films were made, the directors they brought on board. And I also think there's something to be said about Tom Cruise's public images as you go through these films as well. And that's kind of like one of the few remaining film stars, air quotes. That's also quite an interesting thing to look at from a sort of film history perspective. Yeah, I think this fits into our. mold of long-running franchises that chart how franchise filmmaking has changed over the period on which they run. So Alien obviously goes from the 70s to the present day and reflects

different changes in franchise filmmaking and also different directors bring different sensibilities to it. So this is certainly the case with Mission Impossible for the first few entries. I think as we discuss the franchise, we'll see how it gets into a bit of a rut later on. But certainly it changes as it goes and, as you say, has this bit of identity crisis wobble after the first film where it flaps around a bit trying to discover what the franchise is. I think the major difference, one of the major differences that I perceive between this franchise and Alien and Jurassic Park is that, and we will discuss it, I don't think the first film is the best film in this franchise. franchise, unlike Alien and Jurassic Park. That's one I'm interested to go through myself, because I honestly think if you put a gun to my head, before we did this recording, and maybe even after I re-watched it, and I've seen each of these films,

would they accept? Not all of them, but I've seen most of these films multiple times. I think even after re-watched this one, I might have said that this is, to be honest. But, you know, we'll see as we'll see as go. It's not, it's very obviously not as clear-cut. as in particular, like the Dino Pod, which is our last series we recorded before this, it's definitely not an open and shut case in the way that I think it kind of was there. Absolutely, yeah.

We should also say, you're coming to this fresher than I am. I watched all the Missed Impossible films a year or so ago, just over a year ago, and reviewed them on my own website, reviews per minute.com. This would have been ahead of the release

of Dead Reckoning. Part one. This was just after the release of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 No, no, that's how you've got to do it now You've got to do it, ESMR style, Dead Reckoning Part 1 I was going to leave all this discussion until when we get to it

Yeah, ridiculous that they can Name a film Part 1 and then not produce a part 2 Yes, so I've watched all these fairly recently So I have a fairly good idea of how the franchise shapes up, my opinions probably won't have changed that much in the year and a half since I watched them. So I have a pretty firm idea of my rankings of the franchise. But like I say, you're coming to this somewhat fresh. How long has it been since you watched the first mission impossible? Since I watched the first mission, Boswell, it hasn't been that long. I'm pretty sure I've

watched at some point in the last two or three years maybe, I think, certainly that. I would say probably this is probably the one that I have to date not including the rewatch I did for this very recording I think it's probably the one that I've come back to the most often like it's one of these films that when it's popped up on TV

in the years since I will tend to watch it right because it's a fairly snappy piece of work it's not you know overly long Brian De Palma as a director that I like a lot and I'm sure we'll talk about you know his work as we get into it so I've actually rewatched

this one quite recently and I think it's probably the one I've watched the most I think it has the feel of something you could stumble across on ITV2 of an evening and just let it roll just play it from wherever you join it

yeah and as we record this I post on social media that I caught myself standing with my hands on my hips standing up watching a couple of scenes from Conclave while my wife was watching it's that kind of yeah I think I think now that I've completed my full evolution into, you know, my full dad form, having done that, this is exactly the sort of film I could imagine doing that with, basically, you know.

Another one more note on the franchise as a whole and our aim here, before we get into 1996's Mission Impossible. The previous series of this podcast have tried to bring this kind of academic research to the endeavour, where I've looked through the academic research. research for about Alien and Jurassic Park franchises. I couldn't find a lot of that Mission Impossible. There's surprisingly little been written about it. So I'll continue to look as we go through, but I think there'll be generally less referring to scholarly work and published work on these films. That's not to say there'll be none. I've got a few sources, but I was surprised at how little critical appraisal has been done of this franchise as a whole. Yeah, I did a little look at myself, and I was also surprised.

I mean, without wanting to jump the gun on the later ones, I suspect there's more on the earlier films, and I don't think that's just a time-based thing. I think we'll probably have something to say, or at least I will have something to say about that as we go through. But I think certainly compared to the other ones, I think we will probably have a lot more original thought here, for better or worse. Agreed.

Yeah, it's, you know, we had critical race fairy readings for ALA. and we had queer readings of Jurassic Park that work just doesn't seem to have been done for Mission Impossible it's just slipped by as a big temple franchise that isn't deserving of scholarly work or of scholarly consideration and maybe we'll discover why but that seems to be the case

but today we are discussing 1996's Mission Impossible directed as you said by Brian DePaulmer and interestingly written by our old friend from Jurassic Park David Cope and Robert Town who also contributed to the screenplay So Mission Impossible is a adaptation of a television series I've never seen the television series I don't know if you have

No I haven't either Yeah the Power Mount Pictures own the right to the TV series And tried for years to make a film version but it didn't pan out Tom Cruise was a fan of the show since he was young so he really pushed it and in fact chose Mission Impossible

as the inaugural project of his new production company Cruise Wagner Productions and convinced Paramount to put up the budget he started working on a story with Sidney Pollock for a few months before they eventually hired Brian DePaulmer

to direct and they went through a couple of screenplay draft that nobody liked before bringing in David Cope, Steve Zalien and Robert Town to write the thing. The film went into pre-production without a finished script. De Palma designed the action sequences, but they didn't have a story around those sequences by the time they started production. So they ended up building a beginning, middle and end around those story details. crews also contributed to this he wanted a big showy action set piece to push up the budget

and the eventual scene that we'll talk about in the lobster restaurant the fish restaurant with the giant tanks ends up being that that big old scene as for the reactions from the people who made the original series this is the series from the 60s and 70s cast members did not like it They largely reacted negatively to the film when it came out. Peter Graves, who played the character of Jim Phelps in the original series, which I think is John Voight's character in this, did not like how Phelps turned out in the film. He didn't like that.

Spoilers. His character gets revealed as a traitor and gets killed off. He didn't like that at all. Martin Landau, similarly, was in the original series and didn't like the action adventure bent that they moved towards in this film. And so I can imagine he absolutely hates the latest ones, if he's still alive. Which is not, he died in 2017. But yeah, that's how the film came about.

It was released in 1996, May 22nd, 1996 in the US. and it comes out in a year that has several heavy hitters at the box office. So the number one films of 1996 are Independence Day at number one. Great film. I'm not going to hear a word against Independence Day. Twister at number two. Michael Crichton film. Michael Crichton written film. Mission Impossible at number three. at the Rock at number four

hunchback of Notre Dame at 5 101 Dalmatians Ransom Never heard of it It's a Mel Gibson thing Ransom is a Ron Howard film with Mel Gibson Yeah The Nutty Professor at number 8 Jerry Maguire

Another Tom Cruise film At number 9 And Space Jam At number 10 It does also tell me that chart actually It's another classic thing If you ever come across a high grossing film and you have absolutely no memory of that film whatsoever,

you can assume it was directed by Ron Howard. Yeah, I think that's fair. So there's a good look through his filmography. It's replete with things that made a lot of money that are basically not remembered by anyone. Oh, yeah, yeah, he did do the Da Vinci Code, I suppose. Yeah, exactly, yeah, you see? Apollo 13, yeah.

Yeah, Ron Howard film. Pretty sure that Formula One film with Chris Hemsworth, was that not Ron Howard? Rush. I couldn't even tell you. Yeah, I'll take your work for it. If in doubt, if in doubt, Ron Howard directed it. That's the rule.

Maybe one day we watch all of Ron Howard style. The Ron Howard pod. We do Nazi Dora, we're 60 years old for anything. Yeah, we don't really do, you know, runs of directors films. You know, the Blank Check podcast. Might have to release that more than once a month if we do that one. The Blank Check podcast already has that covered. But it might be interesting to do it for Ron Howard, a filmmaker who I think no one is critically reappraising.

So, yeah, there's several kind of big blockbusters in this list that I think we'd say are classic summer blockbusters. Independence Day, Twister, Mission Impossible. Even the Rock, to some extent. The Rock feels a little different. I feel like I shouldn't, but I do, you know. That's okay. I liked it more when I was young I didn't realize it had made that much money actually

I didn't realize it would be that high up on an annual box office gross list to be honest And then we have the Disney films Hunchback 101 Dalmatians Notty Professor in Space Jam obviously aren't Disney But they fit into that same mould of Family Friendly Kid films Again that would be released in the summer or around the holidays

I think the film that's interesting for me in this Because I knew it was around this time, right? But I don't think I'd really appreciate it. It was the same year is Jerry McGuire, right? This is one that I find interesting. And I just introduce this idea of, like, you know, how these films track Tom Cruise's public persona as well. Jerry McGuire is a film that now would not get made with Tom Cruise, right?

This is a different era of Tom Cruise. There is no way that film gets made today with him in that role. Oh, no. We'll talk about Tom Cruise's role in this film and I'll save some thoughts about his changing status and public perception for later episodes when his public perception really changes but yeah he was in a very different mould

prior to this film and it's interesting that this film was the first that his production company produced because it has come to absolutely define his career you know these days so I was just finding in May around when Mission Impossible came out Twister came out the week before Flipper came out the week before

Heaven's Prisoners never heard of that Norma Jean and Marilyn which is a biopic of Marilyn Monroe obviously Spy Hard came out that same week that's a Leslie Nielsen kind of a parody of spy films and yeah Dragon Heart came out the week after

Oh Dragon Heart Jesus, that's a throwback With Sean Conner Yeah There's another film you forget exists So yeah apart from Twister There's not really anything Pushing Mission Impossible away from the top spot

At the box office at the time it comes out Yeah I think at some point Because I think my first experience of this film Is probably, as I recall around this time It was probably a rental from Blockbuster or probably when it came on TV, and it would have come on TV a lot quicker than these days. I definitely didn't see this at the cinema, so I think I was aware of the fact that it made

as much money as it did, actually, and, you know, like, that is an extremely high sum of money for then, and I suppose I'm just surprised that, you know, a film based upon this TV series would make that amount of money here, up against the likes of, you know, I mean, okay, I mean, it didn't make it near as much money as independent stated. It's, you know, far in the way out there. But I suppose it's just, I kind of look back on this, this feels like an era of films being released based upon questionable adaptations of TV series as well, right?

I feel like there was a lot of these kick around. I went back and had to look at them, right, because I wanted to, and I'm probably engaging a bit of confirmation bias here, right, because I'm seeing these, oh, yeah, that one, oh yeah, that one. But I do recall this at the time, right? this is around about the sort of era where you got there was Lost in Space came out in 1998. I remember Lost in Space

Gary Oldman. Which was a slightly ill-fated Matt LeBlanc vehicle basically. So that was an interesting one. Then I think part of the, one of the more successful ones was the Adams family, right? That came out with a film adaptation. A few years before

this, she had the Flintstones. There was a Power Rangers film came out in 1995. Which even at the as a child, obsessed with the Power Rangers, I thought it was rubbish. I fell asleep in the cinema. You know, the first X-Files film came out in 1998. You know, like, we do, there is this little period, I feel, that's happening from kind of like the mid through to late 90s, early 90s, early 90s, where we're starting to mine sort of TV for ideas here. And I feel like

this is probably probably the only one that is really, that I can think of. and I'm going to eat my words here when I think of something else. This is the only one that's really stuck, I think, right? You know, other things have kind of hung around as we have other Power Rangers films. But, like, I think this is the only one that really kind of like escape the shadow of the TV series. In this case, almost immediately, right? But I think when people think about the X-Files, they think about the TV show, right? You know, when they think about Power Rangers, they think about the TV show, right?

When people think Mission Possible, there'll be huge swathes of people who have absolutely no idea. it was based on TV cities now. Absolutely none whatsoever. And that I find interesting, right? Because I think this was a little bit of a trend around this time. I think this sort of thing was happening. But this is the only one that's really stuck and stuck for as long as it has, I think. Yeah, I mean, you're ignoring the cultural impact of the Rugrats movie in 1998. But apart from that, I think you're right. There's a whole spate of these TV show movies that... There were a lot of those kids' cartoon adaptations. actually, I've deliberately in it, because it was like an Arthur one,

and I've deliberately omitted them, actually, because if you include those, then it really was a little moment for that sort of thing. Yeah, X-Files is a particularly interesting case that I wrote a little bit about on Letterbox when I re-watched the X-Files, including the movies, because it really does feel disposable in the context of watching the show as a whole. It doesn't even really fit, but it feels very standalone. alone. But this is also in the, in Pierce Brosnan's Bond era as well, which ran from

1995 to 2002. So I think it's getting some cultural interest from coming out a year after Golden Eye in a year where there is not a Pierce Brosnan Bond coming out, where there's interest in this kind of spy thriller paradigm, you know, Golden Eye has somewhat rejuvenated interest in that but there's no bond to compete with it so i think it's getting some of the cultural runoff there as well but yeah you mentioned when you first saw it um i must have first seen it on tv i imagine at some point as was always quite interested in spy stuff as a teenager you know interested in the kind of bond films like i mentioned and i just i really loved the central heist in this film. We'll talk about you when we get to it, but the kind of central

heist scene, I think, was something I hadn't seen in a spy film, that kind of espionage rather than, you know, big explosions. And it really appealed to me. It really made this film stand out. Before I went back and we watched these films, I could describe that scene to you very clearly. I couldn't describe anything else in the film, with the possible exception of the climax because nothing else had that same impact on me it's funny you say that actually

because I think the two scenes you mentioned the climax and the central one to talk about it I think I also could I actually think the opening I had a very good memory of as well that made quite an impact

on me I think just because the tension of the whole thing we'll get into it but this is the one which is stuck in my mind the most like I honestly I think

so the time of recording the only two that I've rewatched for the pod so far are this one and Mission Possible too which I'll keep my powder dry on until we we come to that episode but I think honestly I could not tell you many plot details from any of these films sitting here right now before I rewatch Mission Impossible I probably could yeah there's something about it it's kind of lodged in my head better than the other ones and you know we'll get into why that may be the case as we go through them but yeah well let's go let's let's launch into it Let's have our thoughts as we go through the structure of the film, as we usually do.

So the film opens in Kiev with a surveillance operation. We see some operatives interrogating someone to get a name out of them. And it's revealed that it's a set-up. The room isn't real. The old man who was doing the interrogating rips his face off to reveal a fresh-faced young Tom Cruise, and the woman who was supposedly dead in the room was not dead. This is the work of the IMF, the impossible mission force. who are an espionage wing of the US government,

who do the kind of missions that the other people can't. A fairly standard set up for this kind of thriller. And are increasingly referred to just as the IMF in future films because impossible mission force is the goofiest agency name you could ever come up with, I think. I have a lot of thoughts that we'll get to later on on how the IMF is positioned in later films. but yes in this one it's it's quite different it's different and we'll get into it fairly soon so the fast-paced title sequence with the iconic theme song

with clips from the upcoming film we're about to watch now this is a stylistic thing that they've actually retained throughout the entire franchise as far as I'm aware you get to see clips of the upcoming film as if you're watching a trailer for the film that you have sat down to see but I love the theme song as well I really like the theme song This is the, is it Lalo Schifrin?

Yeah. Yeah, who did the theme song and this is just an adaptation of it. So we cut to John Voight on a plane. He is offered a small VHS tape to watch on the plane. He's also smoking a cigarette because it is 1996 and you can smoke on planes and you get a little VHS tape instead of a digital display. The one thing I will say is this scene, there's something about the air traffic. on the scene that isn't even 1990s. It feels intensely 1980s,

frankly. There's something about it, just like the sort of like harsh lighting and everything in shadow and smoking a cigarette and tape decks and the arms of the chairs and stuff. It does, if you ever needed any evidence that you were watching a film from a different hero when you sit down to watch this, you get

straight into it. That's something I have in my notes as well is that this feels like a 90s movie. This feels like a 90s action movie. In contrast to Alien and Jurassic Park, which both feels timeless, which you can watch and doesn't feel particularly dated, either of them. You know, Alien has this science fiction aesthetic that is utterly unique, and Jurassic Park just doesn't feel like the 90s.

It just feels, you know. So this is a 90s action movie. This has a sense of kind of 90s fun that I'll argue later films lack. but that also feels very embedded in a time, because John Voight is smoking a cigarette on a plane. Yeah, I look, we'll get into it. I think it's a whole. The film holds up as an enjoyable watch,

but there are individual elements of it, and this is one, I'm sure we'll get to other ones later, which have aged horrendously, you know, so, yeah. So someone has stolen the knock list, which will be the McGuffin for this film. The bad guy, the person who's stolen it, has half and needs the other half to match code names against real names, blah-b-b, it doesn't matter. It's a Muguffin.

We get a brief rundown of the team, including Ethan Hunt. So Voigt goes to Prague to give a briefing to the team. They set up tech and they look at maps and they make sure everyone knows their positions. It's quite a quiet and understated start compared to what the films will become. You know, they start with an explosive action sequence nowadays. And this is focused on SpyCraft rather than action. There's a brief scene where we see Tom Cruise in a kind of rubber mask disguised as a senator. He's talking about the Frank Church hearings.

And I found a article in the Los Angeles Review of Books by Pat Cassells talking about this scene where he's disguised as a senator and talking about actual government espionage hearings. and actual thoughts about government overreach. And it's, it's, he says that it's hard to believe these wonky references to real world legislative juduate are from the same genre as a later films, let alone the same franchise. So as we go into the mission, Cruz is, is wondering about the mission in disguise. We're also cutting to the other members of the team. Fairly regularly, it doesn't feel yet like Tom Cruise is the main character.

Yeah, I'd agree that. It has much more of an ensemble feel. And I find that interesting, right, because Tom Cruise is, so, he's a movie star at this point. You know, I mean, like, he's been in a lot of big films. It's not like we're, I mean, relative to now, like, 30 years later, this is early in his career. But, like, you know, he was, he's known, right? He's a, you know, he's the guy, right? So it is quite interesting to have it presented this way in the initial. kind of reel of the film. Yes, he's already been in Top Gun, you know, he's been in Rain Man, and he's been in, well, the same year, Jamie McGuire comes out. He is a star, but the movie doesn't present him as the focal point for these first few scenes. It's interesting. There's some fun shots in this sequence.

Like, there's a bit where the elevator is filmed on a cutaway stage, so you get to see people, the camera sort of traverses through the walls as people move through I think that's a fun piece of cinematography giving a sense of the actual physical space but they are sneaking into this secure building and it goes wrong Jack, one of the members of the team

gets stuck on an elevator going up and gets squished Jim Phelps, John Voigt's character gets shot and falls off a bridge there's a car bomb which takes out some team members Kristen Scott Thomas gets stabbed and Ethan Hunt gets framed for the stabbing and has to run away. There's a bit of a noir feel to these misty Czech streets. There's kind of breath frosting in the air,

and it feels very real and visceral compared to, I think, some of the sterile CG action films of today, and including later Mission Impossible films, you know, it's nice to see filming in real locations rather than on sets. It makes a huge difference for me, for immersion. Yeah, and I think, you know, and that's not to say sort of like, you know, there isn't stylized elements here. I mean, like, the amount of, the amount of mist is, you know, to the point of parody a little bit, actually, right? But it's just, but for the atmosphere that is being evoked, right?

And this is something that basically will recur throughout the film, the sort of like, you know, sweaty paranoia, right? This idea of people kind of like disappearing into the mist, something. It really adds to the atmosphere of it. and I think it's one that really these films have not ever recreated again since for me. I have that in my notes as well this is lean and claustrophobic

and paranoid with more in common with a like an Alan Pacula film or a John La Cary novel than the big action of the later films than what this franchise will become. This is more focused on espionage and state spycraft so Ethan goes to meet the team's

handler Kittridge at a restaurant with big aquariums all over. This restaurant is full of Dutch angles, tipping the camera over to reflect Ethan's growing paranoia. He's told to leave Prague, but he grows suspicious because he was aware of a completely separate IMF team who are also on the mission. And the handler tells him that Max has corrupted a member of IMF, and they suspect Ethan, the only survivor is in cahoots with Max. The whole operation was a mole hunt. And then interestingly, there is a mention of Ethan. father and his farm and his financial troubles.

Now, this forms kind of an emotional basis for Even Hunt's character to save his family. As far as I'm aware, Even Hunt's family are never mentioned again in the franchise. I could be wrong. I don't think so. Let's keep track of it. Off the top of my head, I don't recall anything. He very much seems like a man without a background, without a home in the later films. He is just, you know, this.

archetypal figure. Almost like they don't want you thinking about a character played by Tom Cruise that way. Exactly. But Ethan has some explosive gum that he was given earlier, and he blows up the entire aquarium restaurant and fish spill out

into this Prague square. We've had at least one split diopter shot by now, I think, haven't we? Oh, I'm sure. I was going to mention the split diopter shots at some point, but yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure we've had at least one by now. The Parma is fond of a split diopter shot, where you get two characters in focus at the same time,

but clearly the frame is split. Yeah, big, big fan of those. Ethan escapes to the IMF safe house, which surprisingly his handler doesn't know about, and he searches Usenet Groups for Max. So it is 1996, and he searches Usenet Groups for Max starting with just doing a search for

Job 314 which was something his handler mentioned and also just going to max.com yeah it's asking for the internet this film is just fantastic yeah it's just fantastic it's very much you know this is the 90s this is how we use the internet

I mean frankly I would have this films the way this film has imagined the internet I would happily have that back yeah he says on a podcast distributed on the internet but still you know yeah so he tries max

dot com he searches for the word job which just looked like job and eventually realizes that job 3.314 refers to the book of Job which leaves into Usenet groups where he emails Max as Job using that specific verse

yeah I think it says a lot that like watching particularly watching it in 2025 but frankly even watching it in kind of like the mid-noughties or something like 10 years after it came I think it says a lot about a film that includes a fairly physically impossible set piece in its end, latex, masks and ridiculous sort of advanced technology. This is the part where you need to suspend your disbelief the most, really, is this entire sequence.

This is a bit that's not aged particularly well. So he's a great spy. He spends all night emailing dozens of people with this specific verse before falling asleep and having a bad dream about John Voigt broken and bloody and blaming him for his death He wakes up and Claire is there Claire is Jim Phelps's wife

She's played by Emmanuel Berat And she Wants to Will help Ethan and help him to find the mole Using the Knock List Ethan gets an email from someone arranging a meeting And he meets Max

Who he's played rather wonderfully by Vanessa Redgrave. Very underappreciated performance in this, I think. Yeah, terrific. She gets across this kind of powerful nature with a hint of villainy. We've also just a hint of, this is just business, this is just business to me,

that I really liked. And again, I think leans into the kind of Le Carre nature of this film, rather than some of the bigger villains later in the franchise. but they're being tracked by Kittred's team, they get away it's also worth noting that Danny Elfman did the score for this because it is 1996 and his... Daddy Elfman did all scores in the 1990s

and 80s and his score in this bit is very plinky plunky and very Danny Elfman if you didn't know Danny Elfman was doing the score up until this point this scene will clue you in there's a flirty scene where Cruz and Max escape the raid, Max wants the entire knock list, Ethan agrees to get

it in exchange for Job, the mole, in the organisation. And he even searches for other disavowed agents to help him break into CIA headquarters in Langley to get the knock list. He ends up with Jean-Renaud and Ving Rhames.

I think John Reneau is great in this. I think John Reneau is great in lots of things. Yeah, he's on this, though. I think what's quite I mean, the thing is, right, I would love to go back to the 90s and see what people thought of this cast, right? Because it is a really pretty stellar cast, right? And I think this still would have been at the time, right? Because I think Jean Reno must have been, this must have been a roundabout the time of Leon.

I can't remember if this would be just after, I think. I want to say Leon was 95, but I don't know if that's actually, right? 94, okay. And then Ving Rames is just coming off. Pulp Fiction as well right so you know and there's a bunch of other folk here who are you know well known like John Voight obviously Vanessa Redgrave like it is quite something I think that what's interesting about this is we spoke about the fact that the film presents itself

more as of a more of it as more of an ensemble at the start yeah Christian Scott Thomas is in the team at the start and I think it's I just find it quite interesting because like it feels like the roles are a little bit less nailed down. And I think one thing I found it quite interesting about this opening kind of stretch of the film is this love triangle is kind of set up

a little bit between Emmanuel Bayard's character Claire who is Jim Phelps's wife played by John Voight and Cruz, Ethan Hunt. But I would actually argue he's actually got in the very brief scenes that he has with Chris and Scott Thomas, right?

I think she has far more chemistry with him. And I also think that Vanessa Redgrave has a lot more chemistry. And I don't know and I think that maybe says something to Vanessa Redgrave's performance as much as anything else but a lot more, like that just flows beautifully in a way that it seems

with the manual way are, don't to the same extent really. Yeah. No, but crucially sees an older woman and therefore cannot be an attractive person in a Hollywood film despite her obvious chemistry with

Yeah, exactly. With crews. So, like I say, they do have a flirty scene in the car on the way to escape, but, yeah, he's largely got his eyes set on Claire. So the team set up this heist by showing us a voiceover of how the IMF mainframe is accessed. There's this little room in Langley that is, you know, hermetically sealed for all intents and purposes, where it's one dude's job to go in and, I don't know, work on the computer in there. but he has to go

only he can go in and if he drops anything on the floor or if there's condensation or whatever the alarm goes off it's solid set up for the film's main set piece

and there's a clear focus on kind of blocking and mapping the physical space for the audience reminded me of Spielberg and how you know intentional the cinematography in Spielberg is

because it gives a very clear idea of the space and how the space and how they're going to access it. You know, you feel De Palma's camera work in these scenes. You feel the close-ups, the Dutch angles, the zooms. All the blocking feels very deliberate in a kind of new Hollywood way that you don't get with kind of people planning action set pieces today. And then there's a central heist scene, which is terrific. Highlight the film, as I've already said. and it kind of distills the film's essence of tension,

Spycraft and espionage. You know, there's cool touches like a pen that squirts some kind of emetic poison into a coffee cup. There's a little extendable magnet screw undoer and screw catcher that is very cool. The requirement for absolute silence

is fun. And, you know, there's several minutes of almost silent action where it's just Jean Reno grunting as he holds the rope and the sound of sweat falling off Tom Cruise's face. Yeah, and there's a lot about

even sort of like the very De Palma stylistic flourishes, right, which you know, we spoke about the fact that we've probably had at least, I don't know about this time or in time, probably at least three split diopter shots at this point. And I just like a split diopter shot just for

the sake of it really. I quite like like the aesthetic of it. But I would argue the one that I can think of here is superbly well done and it really adds to the scene as well right and it's a shot from below where you see the guy operating the terminal you know is there and he's come back in

and you know Ethan Hunt is suspended above him and it's just I love it I love that shot so much right because it's kind of like it's got one of your weird De Palma Dutch angles and it's off kill because it's incredibly tense at this point and you know cruises in focus and

guys in focus and it really gives that sense of oh my god he's right there he's right there you know and like the tension is unbearable but not only that there's also the fact that because of the way that it's set up with the lights and everything the actual kind of like split in the in the shot is actually reasonably well masked in a way that it's not always in that type of shot so it's just that one shot is kind of like you know the entire sequence is superb for a lot of the reasons that you've mentioned and others will talk about but that one there is just kind of kind of like beautifully indicative to me of how the visual approach is building tension as well, right? Even the sort of like, you know, stylistic flourishes that are, you know, exactly that,

right? They're not necessarily for kind of like, you know, narrative purposes, but they just, you know, they look good. They're, you know, their stylish filmmaking. They're even here, they're just amping the whole thing up. Yeah. You know, I quite like this franchise and I'll lay my cards out. I quite like this franchise. And when I hear that theme song, you know, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun this is the scene I am thinking of more than any of a scene, even though as I've said it's mostly silent. But I think of this scene.

I think of them heisting this high security building, you know, this incredibly tense scene. There is one of a scene that comes to mind with the same kind of tension and the same kind of tension and the same kind of vibe in a later film and I think I'll just mention it when we get to it but yeah that comes to mind

as one of my favourites as well but it's a terrific scene it's incredibly tense and works incredibly well I have an article by I have a book chapter by Lisa Perth

called Confronting the Impossibility of Impossible Bodies Tom Cruise and the aging male action hero movie in the book Revisiting Star Studies. And it's mostly about the kind of aging male actor, as the title suggests, through the lens of Tom Cruise. So I'll probably quote this more as we go through the film and as we go through the films and he ages.

But it's worth noting, as Lisa Purse says in this article, he had been in Top Gun, he had been in Days of Thunder. And both those films had showed off. a form of male exhibitionism that is fairly static so in those films his body is kind of fetishized

but is static you know you're looking at it but he's just sitting in a cockpit or playing beach volleyball and not doing a lot this changes per se with the first mission impossible film

in which it is declarative in its construction of a new Cruz action body and what would become Cruz's signature mode of action exhibitionism. So there are two key facets of this exhibitionism, acrobatic physical extension and running at pace and at length. Both forms of spatial extension that are emphatically rooted in the body. So she refers to this scene where he's doing these kind of acrobatics from the ceiling and moving his body in kind of sinuous ways and very careful ways and talks about how the films will develop his classic run, where he runs with his fingers, you know, clenched together.

And both these, this film leans into this new mode of Cruz's body and the action hero, really. Because Cruz is quite different from, you know, coming out of the 80s. He was not a Schwarzenegroes Stallone, who were muscle men, who were big, beefy boys. he is he has a fairly I don't know normal body for an actor his age you know well built obviously but not not even as you would get nowadays not Jackman not Hugh Jackman and not Chris Evans not Chris Hemsworth for example his muscles aren't what define him as an action hero it's his ability to do these stunts to do them acrobatically and to run really fast.

Like, obviously, there'll be more running as we get into the films, but, yeah, this, this, this, this scene in particular is labeled as this kind of start of what will be Cruz's action persona for the next 30 years. It's interesting, actually, because the thing that springs to mind, actually, when you're talking about, you know, the static nature of it, like, you could even, you could even link this back to another film that kind of, like, was a big. Tom Cruisewoman in the time of this is going to come completely out of left field

because this has come to me on the fly. It's an interview with the vampire actually, right? Because there's a lot in there about kind of like, you know, bodies being static, right? You know, like one of the main plots that film is around Claudia kind of like not being able to mature into full wind. There's a lot about kind of like Lestat being this beautiful figure, right? And it's kind of this idea.

Like when he's defeated, it's when his throat's slid and he kind of like ages and decays before your very eyes. So it's interesting that it also kind of, this series, which is not reliant on that, right? And to a certain extent it embraces, like, the ability of what he can do rather than what he looks like

is an interesting one. Exactly. I think it's an interesting argument that Purs makes that he is obviously a desirable male figure, but is positioned differently before and after this film from a more static to a more active, action-oriented way.

but not in the same style as Swatchanegroost alone or even Hugh Jackman but they do they succeed in the heist with my IT security hat on obviously the CIA should make the terminal impossible to turn on unless the security mechanisms are off like it doesn't make sense that the computer would be able to turn on while all the security mechanisms are on because by definition no one should be in that room

but they didn't and they get the knock list onto a disc and then evacuate the building anyway while leaving behind evidence so a knife falls out of does the knife fall from Jeanvenorges Yeah I can remember the exact mechanism for it

But basically when Cruise is coming back up into the draft He drops the knife He drops a knife and it You know There's a tense moment Is it going to land on the floor Where it'll set everything off

And it lands on the desk Just as the door reopens So even the sound won't what doesn't set off the alarm it's a strange thing to have happened my minor thing that I want to bring up right so you mentioned that there's like a sort of emetic poison that's put into the guy's cup

yeah you know emetic means vomiting it makes him makes him vomit give them a poorly tummy and he vomits in a waste paper bin in that room and it's like why does nobody talk about the fact that another sort of like amazing feat of spycraft here is that Ethan Hunt pulls that off while that entire room stinks of vomit

absolutely weeks of it he does take them in with him to be fair but there'd be lingering it lingers yeah especially in that hematically sealed environment where the air doesn't appear to be getting recirculated very well no I love this whole sequence right

and it's also been you know it's been parodied to death in other films there is that there are attempts to recreate this actually in subsequent films to a certain extent nothing quite managed is it and I think part of it is

what I and we discussed before and it's the way that the kind of like the stylistic flourishes with this film and the depalmanist of it this particular entry really amps that up and it really lends itself to this kind of like you know the tension that is meant to be generated during this

I also don't know why there's a rat in the fairly clean and sterile environment of the CIA headquarters but apparently there's just a rat wandering around the vents that's getting us young enough. Between that and your thing around like the computer terror, like this is, this is, I think we've already had a couple now where I have seen a few criticisms, you know, because like when people talk about this film not necessarily being the best entry in the series, and I'm not going to get into whether

it is right now or not, because I need to watch other ones before I make that assertion. Sometimes something that is put forward is the fact that the plot is a little bit contrived or elaborate. I'm not sure how much I agree with that, but there are certainly a lot of conveniences, you know, and I think, like, you know, the thing you mentioned this one's is like, why can you still operate the computer, right? Why is there a rat in the air dots? Why is it? You know, like, there's a lot of that. If you stop and think about it for too long, like, bits of it don't make sense. But I think one of the, one of the genius parts of the film is it's got you so wrapped up in this paranoia about who's doing what and why

and, you know, the tension of the whole thing. It doesn't leave it long enough for you to think Yeah, I'm picking here, but these things don't actually bother me because they're just fun. They're fun conveniences, you know, it doesn't matter. You know, Dickens is full of fun coincidences that propel the plot along don't really make sense. It doesn't annoy me in the same way, like, I don't know, the Rise of Skywalker has a lot of plot contrivances that actively annoy me. This is just fun. It's fine. So they've got the knock list and they regroup in London and arrange the exchange with Max.

Reno threatens Ethan by stealing the disc, but he even does some magic and clowning and is generally a bit of a trickster to confuse him and show that he has the real disc. It's interesting that Ethan Hunt in the scene and in other scenes is a completely different character to later films. He has a lot more of a wacky joker quality, especially in the first scene. where he's introducing the rest of the team and it's starkly different to the self-seriousness that his character has in later films he plays him way more interestingly tapping into this trickster quality

that I think gets reduced a lot later I'm specifically thinking of the latest film I think where he's incredibly po-faced yeah and I think I mean this is where that element I mentioned around kind of like tracking Cruz's public persona a little bit is in here because the Ethan Hunt character here

feels it feels more like an archetype of the 80s, 90s, Tom Cruise character. Yeah, right? He's got a huge smile, you know, he's smiling in talk shows and on the covers of magazines. He's got that winning smile

and Cruz plays that up here for Ethan Hunt in a way that he doesn't later. Yeah, and you know, it feels a lot more like in moments like this, he kind of reminds me a little bit of his character from like a few good men for instance and it's that sort of like

affable arrogance right? Yeah, you know he's a cool guy he likes himself, he knows he's slick you know, you know, you kind of like him same as Top Gunn. Yeah, exactly right? It's to say that you know, same thing in Top Gun

same thing in Jerry McGuire frankly, you know, and it's that this, it's that era of Tom Cruise's career, right? And we'll get into the reasons why I think that starts to shift away from that in subsequent entries. But here, it feels a lot more, I think at different stages of this franchise, it always feels like it's, you know, Tom Cruise inhabiting the Ethan Hunt persona, right? He's never, actually, I'm not going to say he's never been that type of actor, because he has done, he has actually done really quite good work, I think. I'm thinking of Magnolia here, I'm thinking of, I'm a bit of an apologist for Vanilla Sky,

there's various things I can think of, but he's been far more kind of like, you know, it's Tom Cruise playing a role rather than, you know, he's always been that sort of actor, and it does track kind of what people think Tom Cruise does in films, and this is very much of that figure. It's Jerry McGuire, it's a few good men, it's Top Gun, there's a bit of cocktail in there, obviously, right? Because it, you know, like, it does. That's what we're dealing with here. He has an easy charm in this, that in this is just an easy kind of American charm. Later, that will kind of morph into the kind of charm of a con man or a cult leader.

But we'll get to that when we come to it. Yeah, but he's definitely not the sort of like, you know, warrior monk that he is in the latest entries type thing. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. So Ethan sees that the Bible from the Prague safe house came from a hotel that Phelps stayed in He realizes that Phelps must have been the mall And he grows distrustful of Claire, Phelps' wife Ethan's parents get arrested

And this is shown on TV Again, we'll never hear about these people again Because later films make Ethan into more of a cipher And Ethan calls Kittridge to pull him to London And then Phelps crops up he's in Liverpool Lime Street on a phone right next to him and Phelps tells Ethan that Kittridge is the mole but of course he already knows that Phelps is the mall

and there's some fun flashbacks where Phelps is trying to convince him of one chain of events but Ethan is picturing Phelps in the role of the mole it's fun I enjoyed that little flashback and the cleverness of it's a beautiful yeah it's a beautiful sort of like little sequence of cognitive dissonance there it's just a fun piece of

filmmaking that reminded me of you know in the Hunt for Red October when all the characters are speaking Russian and in one shot it zooms into I think it's Sean Connery's mouth start speaking English and it zooms out again

fine that's just fun that'll do we don't need any of our explanation I'm a big apology for that in the Hunt for Red October no I really like that kind of 90s invention, playing with the form a little bit in a way you get a lot of less of

in today's kind of realist environment. Yeah. Also, Jean Renoe stabbed Kristen Scott Thomas. Jean Reno is revealed to be a baddie as well. I know, frankly, he's been considered a bit of a dick up to this point anyway. I was sorry, it's pretty well telegraphed in that respect. Phelps talks about how he he's talking about himself, but he's attempting to make it seem like Kittridge.

He says, the president running the country without his permission, how dare he? And I think this is the bit that kind of taps into this establishment of Phelps in the TV series as this long-running spy who has grown disillusioned with the American Empire and the American system. There's not a great deal of politics in this film. It is a film about America and American espionage systems. that's largely set outside of America, apart from the Langley scenes, which are all indoors, but they are kind of deliberately showing the vulnerabilities

of American institutions in a kind of, I guess, end of history, 90s way. You know, America is confident enough in its empire at this point that it feels like it can show up the vulnerabilities of American institutions like the CIA and the IMF, I guess, though that's fake. in a way that it won't in later franchise films. America becomes a lot more, I don't know, gung-ho after 9-11,

a lot more solid and impenetrable and perfect. But this feels quite 90s in its approach, I think, to American imperialism. Also with the fact that the IMF are casually running American espionage operations in allied countries, like the United Kingdom, Czechia, they started off in Ukraine but Kittridge comes to London

and heads towards the Eurostar TGV train where the gang are already preparing for their exchange with Max this is the big set piece of the end of the film all sat on a train heading towards the Channel Tunnel

the Tunnel as they refer to it throughout which again is a very 90s thing because no one says that anymore and And these exterior train shots were filmed on the Glasgow Southwestern line, which I can see from my window right now. Obviously, I'm a lot more inner city Glasgow. The line extends down to kind of Dumfries and the Scottish borders, which is actually where these bits were filmed out in the countryside. But I can actually see the same train line that this is filmed on.

Ethan gives Max the knock list, and she directs him to a suitcase of money in the baggage, car. And this whole action sequence is on the train. It's in a confined space on the train. And I really appreciate it. I like a claustrophobic shooting style that forces the director to think about the space. So Murder on the Orient Express, Sidley Lumet. I love taking a Pelham one, two, three. I love a scene on a train. I think it uses space well and it creates a claustrophobia just by being on a train. and this works really well for me even if the kind of novelty of the channel tunnel is a bit dated the channel tunnel had opened what a few years before I don't actually know it couldn't have been that one before

1994 so yeah two years before so it was a novelty in the baggage car Claire is revealed to be working with Phelps but it's not Phelps it's even in disguise as Phelps because he rips off a rubber mask and reveals that he has been masquerading as Phelps for this bit to get to Clare. Ethan broadcasts this to Kittridge and Phelps escapes on the roof of the train and even goes after him.

Jean-Rinot is flying a helicopter to pick Phelps up from the moving train. I'm sure there could have come up with a better plan for escape, but they didn't. It's fine. It's a good sequence. And the train is speeding towards the channel tunnel. and Ethan hooks the helicopter onto the train using a line, a winch from the helicopter and so Jean Reno is forced to drive pilot the helicopter into the channel tunnel

behind the speeding train. Completely ridiculous, by the while. I was going to say this is completely ridiculous, and yet this is incredibly fun. I really enjoyed this sequence. I really enjoy it every time. David Schneider, the 90s icon from 90s comedies, including Alan Partridge,

appears briefly as a train driver who, you know, is concerned about the helicopter following his train in the Channel Tunnel and faints in a very comedy way. Yeah, no, this whole sequence is, it's really good. I also like the, you know, kind of, you can't really call it Chekhov's,

chewing gum, I suppose, because it's already been, you know, it's already been deployed once, it's not been just hinted at, but, like, there's just something about it. It just, it brings it full circle quite nicely. It amps things up to kind of ridiculous action level in a way that I think you're more, I think this is the thing that makes this film, right? You can obviously point to that, like, as everybody talks about the, you know, the, the water scene in the, in the, in the suit, but this, right, despite the fact that so much of it is obviously done the water scene, rotoscoping and the, you know, when the aquarium shattering, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. But I think this

sequence is what makes this a mission impossible film, I think, when you relate it back to later films, right? This, I think, is the one that, this is the part that most obviously feels related to the later films, because it's a very different beast to the later ones, like, even having not rewatch a lot of them yet, it is very different. This is the part, I think the most closely relates to those later ones. Yeah, so I think this is

the tipping point for me where I will say you know how if you go back and listen to our episodes on Alien and Jurassic Park I say I liked what Alien did and aliens took it in a different direction I liked what Jurassic Park

did and later films took it in a more action-oriented direction in this case I like the heist scene, obviously, in the CIA, and I do like this action scene. I think this is fun, but other Kimmelms come to focus on this scene in the way that you've just described that I think is detrimental to the franchise. I personally want to see more of the tension of the SpyCraft in that high scene and less

of the action towards the end, even though I like this scene, you know? No, I'm kind of the same. There is a part of me that kind of wants to have a little window into that parallel universe where De Palma did a sequel and it's maybe a similar sort of thing. And then maybe, yeah, maybe there is a bat-shick crazy set piece that finishes the whole film off. Yeah, fine. But the thing that propels it to that point is something else. Yeah, right?

And I think there's probably more of a focus on, certainly the later entries. You know, we'll talk about the kind of period from two and three in subsequent episodes. where I feel like you're driving... The thing that's giving the momentum is the drive towards the set piece that everybody knows is coming, right? Whereas with this one, you know, I didn't watch a lot of trailers at the time,

but, like, trailers were very different then. You've probably got a couple of shots, but, like, there's no sense that this is what you're moving towards, right? What's propelling the film before that is the sort of bug-eyed paranoia of the characters and trying to clear their name and, you know, all this sort of thing. different, it's a different kind of propulsion mechanism for the film.

Yeah, whereas the trailer for Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, part one, has the final set piece. It has Ethan Hunt launching off a motorbike onto a train, and then the train exploding or whatever. Yeah. But as you've said, Ethan has more explosive gum, and he uses it to blow up the helicopter containing Jean Renaud and Phelps. Phelps comes through a grisly end

much to the chagrin of the actor who played him in the TV series The train stops Kittridge gets the knock list Arrest Max Mission accomplished Clare goes to jail Question mark

Pleasure seems to disappear at this point and I think we can assume he's gone to jail Vingrams and Ethan are the only two left They meet at a very traditional looking English pub And Hunt confirms that his parents are safe

and Ving Rames is reinstated on the IMF he's not disavowed any longer and then the film ends with Hunt on a fly and being asked to pick up a VHS tape indicating that he's still part of IMF and he'll be given his next mission Minor point Why does everybody in his film hate films

Jim Phelps at the start of it he's asked oh do you want to watch a film and he says no I prefer theatre and right the end of the film Ethan Hunt has asked the same question on the flight and he says, no thank you. Why does everybody in this film hate films? I think... It's also not

that scene. That is not something the 2020s Tom 2020s will see you at the movies Tom Cruise would stand for. No, no, he loves film now. He's saved cinema. I don't know. This almost feels like a

De Palma thing. It kind of feels like a kind of cynical De Palma edge a kind of new Hollywood ironic disdain for the movies in a way I don't know a lot about De Palma

I've read more De Palma than I've seen because I read the book about the making of the Bonfire of the Vanities which was a tremendous flop and a disaster disastrous production all around but I've not seen as many of his movies

Now I've got A lot of gaps in this filmography But the ones that I have seen I really do like I've got blowout sitting on a Sitting on a disc next door for me right now The Untouchables has long been A favourite of mine

Both of our The film itself and also kind of like The series of Sean Connery impressions I can do from that film Please And then also You know, go ahead No no no I'm not

I'm not committing that to tape. That's after a couple of drinks in the pub affair, that one. I don't think I've done any impressions on any of these podcasts. We'll save that for take. And everybody should be grateful for that. We'll save that for tape on presents after dark. That's just for the Patreon to subscribe. And then, you know, I mean, as a teenager, you know, a teenage boy into film,

like, you know, the archetype is Scarface, right? and, you know, there's a lot to like about Scarface. And actually, there's more overlap between this and Scarface than you think in terms of kind of like, you know, somebody going paranoid with a gun in hand type thing. You know, so, no, I do like a lot of De Palma's work. I think what's quite funny about this film, though, is, like, rewatching it now with this kind of, like, angle on it that I've got about, you know, what we try to do with these series in terms of, you know, critiquing and analyzing and thinking about their place in film history. a little bit, is the films that it reminds me of, and the films it reminds me of are not mission possible films, you know, and I think I kind of thought this would be the case going in with this one particular, but it is quite stark how different it is.

And there's two films that actually kind of came to mind, and this is not an exhaustive list, this probably saves more about films that have stuck in my consciousness and more than anything else. But one film that it really reminded me a lot of was the Boren identity. There's a lot to that in terms of like mistrust of authority,

mistrust of the apparatus of espionage. And then also just kind of in general aesthetics and plot, right? You know, I mean, when he's like this sense of a beleaguered rogue spy from the United States,

traipsing around a major European city, right? So Prague in the case of Mission Possible, and in the case of the first born film it's Zurich and then Paris, right? And obviously in terms of how they approach their action, the fight scenes in the born

identity, like obviously it then goes on to having it, but the funny thing is, it's this weird kind of like circle of influence, right? Because it feels like that has a lot in common with Mission Possible, which probably has a lot in common on the novels, some of which

obviously would, you know, the Robert Ludlum novels that the Bourne films were based on, but then the way that they approach the fight scenes and that probably has an influence on, you know, once you start to get into the mission possible films from the mid-noughties onward. So it's this weird sort of like, you know, a robberist type thing of kind of like influences

eating influences, and it's kind of fascinating to see it, actually. Yeah, which, you know, links into the kind of La Caree novels and the Bond novels of Ian Fleming. as influences which are a lot more strongly felt in this film than I think

will be felt in later films. Yeah and a key thing in that is the other film that actually came to mind and obviously this is also kind of like a generation of film making apart from this right so it's not light for light but in terms to your point about it reminding you of that sort of like

Lacaree type of story is actually kind of the film adaptation of Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy actually remind me of that about that quite a bit, right? And, you know, and I've read quite a few of of those Lacaree novels, and it's got that same kind of like,

you know, you can't trust anyone type, you know, feel to it, which is not the case in later Mission Possible films. It's still there, but like the emphasis is really very different. Yeah, I think this is why I mentioned the time period. It came out, because

coming in 1996, this comes after the Cold War. Yeah. But before, America has sort of established a new global enemy, a new global issue in the form of kind of terrorism and independent terrorist cells and al-Qaeda more specifically. So it's falling between two stools in that it wants to look back to that Cold War paranoia, but it doesn't have a particular enemy. so the paranoia is just

pushed inwards, pushed towards the American project and towards American institutions. Yeah, it's interesting in that regard and it exists in and I don't want to get ahead of myself and talking about the second one because the second one does, the Mission Possible 2

also does in different ways and we'll get into that when we get to the next episode. But this is very much a film of its time in the sense that it's a very post-cold war film, but it's also a very pre-9-11 film. Exactly. Right. And it's

odd in that way to see instead of it having some sort of, you know, overtly Cold War-based enemy, like, you know, the Reds, or, you know, some sort of enemy based upon, you know, terrorist groups or something.

It's far more paranoid about the apparatus of espionage, right? You know, like, this entire kind of like, you know, beast that we created to fight the cold, War? What have we got lurking in the corners and lurking in the shadows that we've put a blind eye to so far? Like, you know, who's left there? And that's where the paranoia and all that aspect if it comes a lot more into it. And I think why the Jim Phelps role, despite the disdain that

the original TV series members HUD for the way that story goes, why I think it works, right? Because it's kind of, it's looking at this character who, that was almost kind of integral to their identity and it's gone now, right? So what, you know, what's left for them? And it's interesting, you know, these are not films and I don't think any of them, with the odd exception of a thing here and there, and we'll get into them when we come to those specific films. I don't think they really, they don't really have political agendas, right? But I think the thing I always feel like saying when people talk about these films and them being, in any way apolitical. It was like, well, the text of the film itself could be apolitical, but the environment in which it came to be and what informs kind of like the framing of certain setups, it's inevitably influenced by the politics of the time, right?

And this is a key example of it right here, right? There is no, you know, there is no China, there is no kind of like, you know, faceless Middle Eastern terrorist group. There is no kind of Soviet Union on which... And you see this a lot of things

of the time, right? They have this same sort of vibe and that's why it feels very of its time in that regard. So yes, the films themselves may not have

you know overt political viewpoints and I don't think a lot of films of this sort of scale and blockbuster you know blockbuster

sensibility do necessarily but it would be naive in my view to pretend that the politics of the time and the geopolitical

situation in time don't inform how these films films are structured and set up. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is a Hollywood franchise. He's coming out in the context of American Hedgemeny. Like, all these franchise films from Hollywood are.

That's just the unspoken ideology behind them, always. But to go back briefly to your point on kind of finding its footing in this historical period, the Piss Brosnan Bond films do that as well, a lot more explicitly. like Golden Eyes specifically reckoning with the end of the Cold War and kind of James Bond as a figure whose time has passed and then Timoa Never Dies gets into the kind of villain is the media and media apparatus and kind of capitalist institutions but both films are doing that in a way in the same kind of way

Bond is doing it a bit more explicitly but Mission Impossible certainly influenced by that and influenced by the kind of political systems of the time, the political changes or lack of changes between the end of the Cold War and 9-11. Yeah, the only other thing I wanted to mention is the role of John Voigt, where here he is creating a bridge to New Hollywood and kind of 70s America, and what's the role I'm thinking of with Dustin Hoffman in the other role?

Midnight Cowboy. Thank you. He's creating that kind of bridge to new Hollywood cinema, which Brian De Palma obviously is interested in and is engaged in. And I think in Megalopolis, which came out fairly recently, the Francis Ford Coppola film, he's doing the same thing. He's creating a bridge to new Hollywood.

But now it looks entirely outdated. Now that is an entirely outdated paradigm and feels past it. It's a kind of similar use of John Voigt, 30 years apart and it's interesting how different the context is between those two roles. In terms of another

something that this didn't, I didn't think of this kind of like a head of rewatching it. It really jumped out to be on watching it. I do find it also quite amusing that this film ends with you know, it ends with the Ethan Hunt and Luther having a lovely

drink at a pub and sort of like, you know, just being, you know, friends, you know, oh espionage friend you know just kind of like just chilling and reflecting on their you know reflecting on their mission and I was looking at this going

this is incredibly amusing to me given how many comparisons the Fast and Furious franchise gets with Mission Possible these days because that's how all those films finish with kind of like you know everybody having a corona and a barbecue and whatnot it's quite funny it's like these little things

yeah exactly you did it again you know especially given like As these films develop, you get more of an emphasis on, like, you know, like, it's a weird kind of, like, thing going on, and they become far more kind of like, it's Tom Cruise, but also there is a recurring cast, and it's kind of like, you know, it's the gang, you know, it's, it's weird, it's an interesting, dynamic. Discussions too much, but I think the franchise will go, it's Tom Cruise, and then we'll broaden out again to be, have a focus on friendship, uh, in, in kind of contrast to, to Fasten the Furious focus on family so we'll see how that develops but yeah you can see kind of nascent seeds of that

in this scene yeah so that is 1996 is Mission Impossible this is a good film in its own right you know I like it I'll be interested to see where it sits in kind of like you know the ranking

that are to do when we come to come to the end of it but I think where the real meat comes in this discussion is also going to be kind of like just, and I think going from this to the next episode is going to be our biggest stylistic whiplash in this entire pod series we're doing, but it kind of, it sets up nicely kind of like exactly like, you know, this is a very cabalian-like franchise as a, you know, especially in these first few entries, right? Yes, so next time, next month we will be discussing Mission Impossible 2, directed by, John Wu and coming out in the year 2000 the year before 9-11 interestingly so we're still in that in that period yeah we're discussing Mission Impossible 2 and and seeing how it compares and how it develops because I think it does have an interesting development compared to a Mission Impossible one mission impossible's pre pre-subtitle era yes it was just one it was

just two and three wait where you could still have numbers where they didn't need to create a sense of infinity, when numbers were not too limiting for the franchise. But yes, we'll be back next month to discuss that. Thank you for listening to Take One Presents and to this new series, The Impossopod. Take One is available on Take One Cinema.net, where we produce film reviews, often specifically focusing on Art House and Festival films, and you can find us on Blue Sky, and Mastodon and other places from Take1Cinema.net. Jim, where can people find you?

So you can find me on Blue Sky, JimGR.biscay.comi. I am still on other platforms, but not really using them. So we'll leave it there. That's kind of the primary place where I'll be at. And obviously, I also have an input into the Take1 Cinema.net account as well. Yes. Similarly, the social media landscape has fractured. repair so just go to simon x a x.com to find out anything about me and my writing and productions

like this if you like the show if you like take one percent please do rate and subscribers subscribe to us on spotify and apple podcasts those are the big ones but subscribe and give us five stars or whatever on whatever podcast platform you use and because that helps discoverability and tell your friends, tell people to listen to us, especially if they're interested in Mission Impossible and the Mission Impossible franchise. Until next time, thank you for joining us. Bye. You know,